Twitter pictures, filtered [Updated]

For the past few weeks, Twitter and Instagram have been trading blows in a battle over how photos are – or aren’t – displayed on their respective platforms. Instagram wants users to spend more time on its new website, and has been steadily removing its inter-connections with Twitter.

The reason? Twitter has been working on its own version of the feature that makes Instagram so appealing to so many – running photos through filters that alter their appearance. For some, this is big fun. But if you want to see how a scene really looks in its pure form, without effects that make it look like it was snapped by a cheap camera from the mid-1960s, the feature is really, really annoying.

Nevertheless, on Monday Twitter announced it had indeed added filters to its iOS and Android apps. The former is still awaiting Apple’s approval process, but the Android version is ready for you now.

Once you’ve snapped a photo on your Android or iOS device, tap the Edit Photo button and swipe through nine different filters. You can also tap the middle, tri-color icon to see thumbnails of all the filters at once.

The filters, provided by Aviary, are fairly basic, but Twitter likely will add more over time.

While Twitter is a force in its own right, Instagram rules the roost when it comes to filtered-image sharing. But one of the reasons Instagram became so popular is because it was so easy to share its photos via Twitter. Without the ability to run a lunchtime burger through a Lomo filter, will use of Instagram for visual oversharing decline?

Possibly, but it would only be short-term. That’s because Facebook – which now owns Instagram – is working on integrating the service into its own offerings. With more than a billion users, many of whom primarily use Facebook via mobile apps, you can count on Instagram’s footprint to grow.

But in the meantime, those who want to share life through rose-colored filters must fall back on Twitter’s lesser offering. As is often the case when platforms go to war with each other, their users end up as collateral damage.